July 31, 2008

Two Americas: One Where Kids Are Always Useful Political Props...

.. and that other America, where John Edwards has discontinued a scholarship program to send rural high school graduates to college, now that he is no longer running for President.

Presumably, he now needs that money for another kind of child support.

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The Morning After

John McCain's latest ad comparing Barack Obama to Paris Hilton and Britney Spears didn't impress me that much, but appears to have made an impression on all the right people.

Why is such a simple association gaining traction, when far more troubling aspects of Obama's life being ignored or swept away?

People don't want to think about the fact that Barack Obama has no executive experience, that this legislative accomplishments are meager, and that his resume is thin. It scares them to look too deep into what he hasn't been able to accomplish... and so they don't.

People don't want to think about the fact that Obama is the first presidential candidate in our nation's history with direct ties to domestic terrorists, or radical, conspiracy-mongering clergy... and so they don't.

They look at the commanding stage presence. They bask in his oratory, carefully scripted not to offend, or to ask too much. They indulge themselves in his promise that he can be everything they need. They set aside reason. They set aside details. In a swoon, they think only about how he makes them feel now.

While followers of Obama have often been compared to religious zealots, the comparison is a false one. Zealots—true believers—can tell you from rote memory the articles of their faith, the details, the specifics that touch their core, often by chapter and verse.

Obamaphiles have been challenged time and again to answer what Obama believes in, to provide the substance behind their devotion, to explain what makes Obama "the One."

Most supporters offer a blank look when asked about his substance. Others get confused, then angry, though they don't even know why. Some rattle off a list of party-held positions or personally-held beliefs. Some, like the candidate himself, simply wave off such requests for substance as a "distraction."

Rachel Lucas and others come the closest in accurately describing Obama lust. It isn't a religious experience. It's beer goggling.

After almost eight years of frothing media pounding on the Bush Administration in particular and Republicans in general, and the addled mumblings and several years of toothless bravado of Democratic leadership, continuous campaign chasers, and plenty of cheap shots, we're all tipsy, tired, and ready to fall into the arms of the first attractive thing that comes along.

Barack Obama sweeps in wearing a pretty smile. He tells us we're beautiful. He utters sweet nothings in our ears, telling us we are the ones we've been waiting for.

He whispers, "It's different not because of me, but because of you. Because you are tired of being disappointed and tired of being let down. You're tired of hearing promises made and plans proposed in the heat of a campaign only to have nothing change."

And as he smiles that beautiful smile, and it all sorta make sense if we don't try to dig too deep. He's trying hard to charm our pants off, and we're inclined to believe him, because believing is easier.

He's pretty, and he's glitzy, and he's popular, and he's hoping you won't realize the trainwreck he is until the morning after the election.

Paris. Barack. Britney.

It resonates for a reason.

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July 30, 2008

Choose The Facts You Want...

...as there seem to be plenty of "facts" to choose from.

James Hider in the UK TimesOnline is just one journalist of many rushing to tell the tragic story of a young Palestinian ruthlessly gunned down by an Israeli soldier:


Israeli soldiers shot dead a young Palestinian boy today during heated protests in a West Bank village close to Israel's huge separation barrier.

Hammad Hossam Mussa, believed to be around nine years old, was mortally wounded by an Israeli bullet as protestors threw rocks near the West Bank close to the village of Nilin.

[snip]

Salah Al Khawaja, a member of Nilin's Committee Against the Wall, said Israeli troops fired live rounds at a group of protesters who ran into Nilin after security forces dispersed demonstrators using rubber-coated bullets.

"Protesters arrived at the wall's construction site outside the village and the soldiers started to open fire with rubber bullets and tear gas. This pushed the protesters back into the village where the boy was hit by a live bullet in his chest," he said.

It doesn't much look like a chest wound.



Other news accounts offer variations of the basic story that roughly corroborate the image, though the L.A. Times reports that the boy was in a crowd; the New York Times claims he was resting under a tree. Also, the boy's age ranges from 9, to 10, to 11, to 12 depending on the news outlet.

It's very sloppy journalism, but symptomatic of reporting from the region.

Interestingly, according to the New York Times, the Israeli Army "had no knowledge of the shooting."

The IHT states that Palestinian officials refused an Israeli request for a joint autopsy, which may cause some raised eyebrows considering the Palestinian history of faking deaths even on video. The Palestinian autopsy states that the bullet that killed the boy came from an M16, a weapon both sides have.

It will be interesting to see the results of the Israeli investigation into this case, even though judgement has already been passed in the eyes of the word's media.

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Summer Camp?

That is what Reuter's says this picture portrays.



The caption reads, "Palestinian youths attend a summer camp organised by the Islamic Jihad movement in Gaza City July 30, 2008."

The Islamic Jihad, of course, is a terrorist group established with the goal of wiping out the Jewish state of Israel and the establishment of an Islamic Palestinian state. Their interests include Qassam rocketry, suicide bombings, and martyr operations.

This isn't a "summer camp" as we would recognize it. This is the modern Hitler Youth.

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July 29, 2008

Lynching, Lynching Everywhere...

Just when you thought the Huffington Post couldn't become any more self-parodying, someone comes along to make it even more laughable:


Despite his background as a comedian, Stephen Colbert is known by many of the authors who have appeared on his show as one of the toughest interviewers in the business. But on July 28, when country music superstar Toby Keith stepped on the set of the Colbert Report to promote his movie, Beer For My Horses, he was greeted by his host with nothing less than reverential admiration. After a jovial, back-slapping sit-down with Keith, Colbert turned the stage over to his guest for a performance of the song that inspired the title and theme of his forthcoming "Southern comedy."

While Keith belted out "Beer For My Horses," Colbert's studio audience clapped to the beat, blithely unaware that they were swaying to a racially tinged, explicitly pro-lynching anthem that calls for the vigilante-style hanging of car thieves, "gangsters doing dirty deeds...crime in the streets," and other assorted evildoers.

Or perhaps Colbert, his audience, and the millions of people who have heard this song since it first hit number 1 in 2003 are simply far more grounded in reality than Mr. Max Blumenthal, who apparently sees a chance to scream "oppression!" behind every rock, tree, and country-western movie and music lyric.

After listing the lyrics to what was until now the uncontroversial lyrics of a song
about a "thirst for justice," Blumenthal whines that:


During the days when Toby Keith's "Grandpappy" stalked the Jim Crow South, lynching was an institutional method of terror employed against blacks to maintain white supremacy.

Though it will doubtlessly come as a shock to Mr. Blumenthal, this song, co-written by Scotty Emerick, is not autobiographical, any more than Keith's "I Love This Bar" is an ode to an illicit man-on-mahogany affair.

The song is entirely fictional and rhetorically set in the Old West, as the imagery of horses, whiskey, saloons, gun smoke, outlaws, and the "long arm of the law" clearly evoked for anyone reasonably grounded in this reality.

Conveniently,Blumenthal glosses over that the lyrics of Keith's song include the all-important words "It's time the long arm of the law put a few more in the ground." This singularly expressed and culturally understood idea of the Old West deputized posse, led by sheriffs and marshalls operating under the color of law and made famous in hundreds of western movies and television shows over decades as part of our shared cultural heritage that Keith is drawing on utterly undermines Blumenthal's creation.

It is a delusion undone, revealing far more about Blumenthal's tortured psychology than Keith's lyrics, Colbert's insightfulness, or America's past.

Mr. Keith has every right to whimsically sing about whiskey for his men and beer for his horses, even as he might suggest that Mr. Blumenthal can (and probably should) take a nice tranquilizer with his merlot.

Perhaps for tomorrow's amusement Arianna Huffington can find a delusion even more spectacular than Blumental's latest—with Naomi Wolf lurking in the background, that is always a possibility—it's that prospect of ever more unintentionally funny, lethally-refined insanity that keep us coming back, time and again.

08/08/08 Update: Toby Keith himself hears about Blumenthal's moronic lynching claims, and tees off:


"It's about the old west and horses and sheriffs and posses and going and getting the bad guys. It's not a racist thing or about lynching. The song was a hit and the words lynch and racism has never come up until this moron wrote this blog."

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Selective Outrage

Sunday's shootings at a Unitarian Universalist church in Knoxville, TN was a horrible tragedy caused by a man with a laundry list of psychological issues and naked hatred against anyone unlike him.

As horrible as these events were, the death toll at the church could have been far worse. Jim David Adkisson was armed with a semi-automatic 12-gauge shotgun and 76 cartridges, but only managed to fire three rounds before being overpowered by the congregation. I wrote about the string of small miracles that occurred at the church, a series of coincidences that kept an awful event from becoming even worse.

As innocuous as that post was to most normal people, online progressive activists and bloggers, wasting no time in trying to twist the tragedy to their political advantage, flooded my inbox and the comments section of that post with crude language and spittle-flecked, half-formed thoughts of rage.

Some claimed that by writing this post, I was "a lying fascist thug," apparently for merely pointing out that in addition to his stated hatred of gays and liberals, he targeted a church "after expressing beliefs to neighbors in the past that he had an abiding anger against Christianity, an anger that appears rooted in his childhood." It was later confirmed that Adkisson did have issues with religion dating back to his childhood, and that the specific church he targeted was one that was once attended by his ex-wife.

Another went off on a rant in another direction, hissing, "So if he had targeted a mosque, that would be OK because it wasn't a church, I presume. You know, them 'sand people' and all that..."

Rarely have I seen strawmen created and then slaughtered with such ferocity, especially by a political group so thoroughly untroubled by the thought of the slaughter most experts predicted would occur in Iraq if their calls for an immediate pullout in Iraq had been heeded in the past few years.

Another stated "your side launched a terrorist attack yesterday. Two innocent Americans died. Why does your side hate America so much?"

Indeed, the meme that the attack was domestic terrorism seems quite popular among some on the far left, and they have trotted out this tragedy as example of a specific kind of domestic terrorism, one that they've branded as "eliminationism."

They spare no bile or blame in asserting that Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, and others in the conservative movement indirectly contributed to Adkisson's abbreviated rampage.

Give their newfound concern about domestic terrorism, and their stated disgust with those who would advocate threats of harm as a political tool via eliminationism, I find it the pinnacle of hypocrisy that they offer unswerving support and near-Messianic devotion to a political candidate who began his ascension up the political ladder with a fundraiser at the home of a well-known pair of domestic terrorists.

Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn belonged to a group that declared war against the United States, bombed the U.S. Capitol, the Pentagon, and other buildings, and attempted to blow up a dance of American soldiers and their dates, only to have the pipebombs prematurely detonate instead, taking only terrorist souls.

The leftwing political blogosphere has no tolerance for domestic terrorists at all...

...unless they're long-time friends of their Presidential candidate.

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July 28, 2008

Small Miracles

There was a shooting at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville, TN yesterday during a children's play. Two people have died, and seven more are recovering from injuries that resulted when an unemployed man with a long history of verbal hostility against Christians targeted this specific congregation because he also hated liberals and gays.

While many in the political blogosphere will no doubt focus on the fact that Adkisson said he hated liberals and gays, the fact of the matter is that the didn't target a gay club or local progressive political groups, he specifically targeted a church. He did so after expressing beliefs to neighbors in the past that he had an abiding anger against Christianity, an anger that appears rooted in his childhood. The church appears to have been targeted because it embodied at least three things this pathetic human being hated, not just the one or two things I know certain critics will single out as they view the world through their own warped prisms.

Adkisson had apparently planned to keep murdering church-goers until gunned down by police. He planned to keep killing innocents until he died in a hail of police bullets... suicide-by-cop. But he was instead tackled and restrained by church-goers just seconds into his attack as he attempted to reload after shooting his shotgun's magazine dry.

The two people that died were 60 and 61. Those wounded were 38, 41, 42, 68, 69, 71, and 76. Though Adkisson walked past an assembled group of children outside the sanctuary awaiting their stage call, he did not fire on them. No children were physically injured, and no parents of young children were killed, creating orphans. There is reason to be thankful for that.

Though he was found with 73 live 12-gauge shotgun cartridges, he was only able to fire 3 before being tackled while trying to reload. Most semi-automatic and pump shotguns hold 5 rounds of 12-gauge ammunition, unless plugged for bird-hunting. Those two additional shots would have taken less than a second to fire, and could have hurt several more people, at least. There is reason to be thankful that the previous owner of the gun was probably a bird hunter. There is reason to be thankful that Adkisson apparently didn't know enough to remove the plug.

Sunday was a horrible day for the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church, and there will be terrible days ahead as they seek to recover, and to heal.

But most will heal, and a day that could have been far worse was not, thanks to small miracles.

Update: Apparently there are some people who want to go on a shrieking political bender about this tragedy (both right and left), but that isn't going to happen here. Comments off.

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July 25, 2008

When Denied A Chance to Turn Wounded Troops Into A Photo Op, Obama Declined to Meet with Them at All

Why did Barack Obama cancel his visit to see wounded U.S. soldiers yesterday at Landstuhl Medical Center in Ramstein, Germany?

According to the Politico and the Chicago Sun-Times, the Obama campaign is blaming the military, claiming that the Obama campaign was told the visit "would look too political."

But according to MSNBC, Obama and his Senate staff could have visited wounded troops; he simply couldn't bring along his campaign staff and the media.

The campaign's response? They withdrew the request to visit the troops.


The official said "We didn't know why" the request to visit the wounded troops was withdrawn. "He (Obama) was more than welcome. We were all ready for him."

If he can't use them as props, it seems Barack Obama has little use for the military. Come to think if it, that is roughly how they factor into his feckless foreign policy plans as well.


Update: Spin away, fanboy. Greg Sargent tries to cover for Obama, citing what we already knew: that Obama's campaign staff (and the media) was prohibited from visiting the hospital. It's a particularly weak attempt at deception, as it overlooks—purposefully, it seems—that there was precisely nothing stopping Obama from bringing members of his Senate staff with him, or simply visiting the troops himself.

But Sargent also claims that Obama didn't bring his Senate staff with him.

Uh-oh.

So explain something to me, Obama fans: how can Obama go on his "look at me" tour of American bases with only his campaign staff, and not with any of his Senate staff, and still claim his trips were part of a congressional fact-finding delegation?

If he only brought his campaign staff, and no Senate staff as Sargent claims, then I'd like to know if American taxpayers picked up any of the costs associated with his multi-nation, round-the-world trip, or it was Obama's campaign alone that picked up the bill.

Update: HuffPo contributor Brandon Friedman also tries the dishonest route:


Barack Obama canceled a pre-planned visit to the troops in Germany yesterday after being told by the Pentagon that the trip would violate a Pentagon policy prohibiting campaign stops on military installations. No problem there.

No problem, of course, except for the fact that flatly isn't what the Pentagon said.

Let's type this slower so that Friedman, Sargent, and the Obamaphiles in the media can follow along:

Obama was never told he could not visit wounded soldiers. In fact, he was told they were prepared for his visit.

What he was told is that he could not bring his campaign staff and the mass media. He had to go as a Senator, not a president candidate.

Once Barack Obama found out he would have to visit wounded American soldiers alone—guarded only by his massive Secret Service and State Department security detail—he balked.

Let's make that a bit more clear:

Barack Obama withdrew his request to visit the troops.

He could have gone, but made the decision not to go on his own, without his campaign entourage.

It's so simply even a journalist could get it right... if they wanted to.

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So Did Obama "Blow Off" Troops, Or Didn't He?

Writing in today's New York Daily News, James Gordon Meek states that U.S. Army officials have disputed an email sent out by an American serviceman stationed at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan, where the author claims that Barack Obama disrespected American servicemen by refusing to meet with them.

The email was published here in full yesterday, and read:


Hello everyone,

As you know I am not a very political person. I just wanted to pass along that Senator Obama came to Bagram Afghanistan for about an hour on his visit to "The War Zone". I wanted to share with you what happened. He got off the plan[sic] and got into a bullet proof vehicle, got to the area to meet with the Major General (2 Star) who is the commander here at Bagram. As the Soldiers where lined up to shake his hand he blew them off and didn't say a word as he went into the conference room to meet the General. As he finished, the vehicles took him to the ClamShell (pretty much a big top tent that military personnel can play basketball or work out in with weights) so he could take his publicity pictures playing basketball. He again shunned the opportunity to talk to Soldiers to thank them for their service. So really he was just here to make a showing for the American's back home that he is their candidate for President. I think that if you are going to make an effort to come all the way over here you would thank those that are providing the freedom that they are providing for you. I swear we got more thanks from the NBA Basketball Players or the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders than from one of the Senators, who wants to be the President of the United States. I just don't understand how anyone would want him to be our Commander-and-Chief. It was almost that he was scared to be around those that provide the freedom for him and our great country.

If this is blunt and to the point I am sorry but I wanted you all to know what kind of caliber of person he really is. What you see in the news is all fake.

Meeks' article counters:


But angry Army brass debunked the Obama-bashing soldier's allegations, which went viral Thursday over the Web and on military blogs such as Blackfive.

The e-mail claims Obama repeatedly shunned soldiers on his way to the Clamshell - a recreation tent - to "take his publicity pictures playing basketball."

"These comments are inappropriate and factually incorrect," said Bagram spokesman Army Lt. Col. Rumi Nielson-Green, who added that such political commentary is barred for uniformed personnel.

Obama didn't play basketball at Bagram or visit the Clamshell, he said. Home-state troops were invited to meet him, but his arrival was kept secret for security reasons.

Meek's article provides another much needed perspective to the story of Obama's visit to Bagram, and makes what I think is a fair case that the officer who wrote the Bagram email was basing his email on his limited first-person perception of events, and that he wrote his post without the benefit of knowing all the facts.

It is vitally important for us to know that Barack Obama didn't play basketball in Afghanistan, nor did he visit a specific tent. We should be grateful that Meek ferreted out the truth and debunked those scurrilous allegations.

But LTC Nielson-Green's refutation of these two rather minor specific points does not at all address the most important allegation made in the viral email, the author's perception that soldiers on base were "blown off" by the junior Senator.

In fact, the PAO admits that Obama only met with selected soldiers. Only service-persons from Illinois were invited to meet him, and soldiers not from Illinois (the author of the email is from Utah) were indeed not met by the junior Senator. Though no doubt a touchy situation for the military, the key premise holds.

The same handful of faces are seen in all the pictures released to the media from Obama's visit. If you were not a soldier from Illinois or otherwise selected serviceman, you were not allowed to meet Obama. The question then arises whether the decision to limit contact with the troops was a decision made by the military brass, if that was a decision made by the Obama campaign, or by joint agreement.

The second email published, from someone at an air base as Obama swung through Iraq stated in part that Obama's visit was "A disgraceful PR stunt, using the troops as a platform for his ego and campaign."

To date the second email has gone unchallenged and a senior officer I interviewed confirmed on background that Obama's visit to Iraq was nothing more than a campaign stop masquerading congressional delegation visit.

Update: James Gordon Meek of the Daily News has posted an update in the comments, noting contact with the author of the email, and his dialing back of the now viral claim. It reads:


"I am writing this to ask that you delete my email and not forward it. After checking my sources, information that was put out in my email was wrong. This email was meant only for my family. Please respect my wishes and delete the email and if there are any blogs you have my email portrayed on I would ask if you would take it down too. Thanks for your understanding."

My military sources don't seem to agree with Meek's assertion that the email constituted a violation of military regulations barring political statements, as the email was sent only to family members. That the email was distributed beyond that was beyond his control.

It bears noting that the Iraq email has not be challenged by anyone, and Obama's refusal to meet with wounded GI's because his campaign staff and the media couldn't come with him is a far bigger story, and one that has done Obama far more damage.

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July 24, 2008

G.I. In Afghanistan: Obama "Blew Them Off"

Blackfive posted this email yesterday and has another supporting account (added below in an update) from another member of the military who was also present during Obama's carefully scripted P.R. World Tour.

I think you should read it.


Hello everyone,

As you know I am not a very political person. I just wanted to pass along that Senator Obama came to Bagram Afghanistan for about an hour on his visit to "The War Zone". I wanted to share with you what happened. He got off the plan[sic] and got into a bullet proof vehicle, got to the area to meet with the Major General (2 Star) who is the commander here at Bagram. As the Soldiers where lined up to shake his hand he blew them off and didn't say a word as he went into the conference room to meet the General. As he finished, the vehicles took him to the ClamShell (pretty much a big top tent that military personnel can play basketball or work out in with weights) so he could take his publicity pictures playing basketball. He again shunned the opportunity to talk to Soldiers to thank them for their service. So really he was just here to make a showing for the American's back home that he is their candidate for President. I think that if you are going to make an effort to come all the way over here you would thank those that are providing the freedom that they are providing for you. I swear we got more thanks from the NBA Basketball Players or the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders than from one of the Senators, who wants to be the President of the United States. I just don't understand how anyone would want him to be our Commander-and-Chief. It was almost that he was scared to be around those that provide the freedom for him and our great country.

If this is blunt and to the point I am sorry but I wanted you all to know what kind of caliber of person he really is. What you see in the news is all fake.

I guess it should come as little surprise, then, that Obama has dropped meetings with U.S. soldiers stationed in Germany—including wounded soldiers from the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan— in favor of meeting with French and German civilians.

Priorities, you know.

Update:

The second email from a member of the military in Iraq , forwarded to me from Blackfive:


I had a first hand view of Barrack Obama's "fact finding" mission, when he passed through this base.

While I can't name it, it's one of the largest air bases in the region, with up to 8000 troops (depending on influxes and transients in mobilization/demobilization status), mostly Airmen and Soldiers, but some Marines, Sailors, Koreans, Japanese, Aussies, Brits, US Civil Service, contractors including KBR, Blackwater and Halliburton, among others in the news. The overwhelming majority of all of these are professional, courteous and disciplined.

Problems are rare.

Casualties are also rare. This base has a large hospital for evacuation—twenty plus beds. I have yet to see a casualty in one, though I am told there are about three evacuations a week through this region, of which two on average are things like sports injuries, vehicle accidents or duty related falls and such. You can tell from the news that the war is going well. The ghouls are now focusing on Afghanistan, since there is no blood to type with here.

This oped is of course subjective and limited, but I will try to present the facts as I saw them. I wasn't able to see much, which makes a point all by itself.

When his plane arrived (also containing Senators Reed and Hagel, but the news has hardly mentioned them), there was a "ramp freeze." This means if you are on the flight line, and not directly involved with the event in question, you stay where you are and don't move. For a combat flight arriving or departing, this takes about ten minutes, and involves the active runway and crossing taxiways only. For Obama's flight, this took 90 minutes, during which time a variety of military missions came grinding to a halt. Obviously, this visit was important, right?

95% of base wanted nothing to do with him. I have met three troops who support him, and literally hundreds who regard him as a buffoon, a charlatan, a hindrance to their mission or a flat out enemy of progress. Even when the rumors were publicly admitted, almost no one left their duty sections to try to see him, unless they were officers whose presence was officially required.

Mister Obama's motorcade drove up from the flight line and entered the dining hall toward the end of lunch time. Diners were chased out and told to make other arrangements for food, in the middle of the duty day.

Now, there are close to 8000 troops on the base and its nearby satellites. No one came up from the Army side (except perhaps a few ranking officers). The airbase resumed operation, once he cleared the flightline, as if nothing had happened. The dining hall holds about 300 people and was not full. The troops did not want to meet him and the feeling was apparently mutual. In attendance, besides the Official Entourage, were the base's senior officers, some support personnel, and a very few carefully vetted supporters who'd made special arrangements. No photos were allowed. No question and answer with the troops. No real acknowledgment that the troops existed.

Obama left around 1530, during the Muslim Call to Prayer, so he's not a practicing Muslim. He was in a convoy guarded by (so I'm told) both State Department and Secret Service Personnel.

Less than three hoursÂ…

Within 48 hours he was in Afghanistan. It takes most troops longer than that to in-process and get cleared on safety, threats, policies and such. Yet he somehow made a strategic summary by not talking to anyone and not seeing anything.

Twenty-four hours after that, he was in Kuwait, back here, and then home, so fast we didn't even know he arrived the second time at this base.

I can't imagine any officer of the few he met told him anything other than what they tell the troops, and what their own leadership at the Pentagon tell them—we're winning. Our troops are stomping the guts out of the insurgency. The surge worked and is working. If the insurgents have to divert to Afghanistan, it means they can't fight in Iraq anymore. We should not change the rules and retreat with the enemy on the ropes as we did in Vietnam. We should finish kicking their teeth in. The Iraqi government now controls 10 of 18 provinces, with US assistance in the rest. Let us win the war. 90% of the troops I know, even those opposed to the war, say that is the way to win. Victory comes from winning, not from "change." In fact, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs is on record as opposing Obama's strategic theory.

Since he obviously knew in advance that's what they'd tell him, and since he didn't care to talk to the troops (we're told by the Left that the troops are horrified, shocked, forced to commit atrocities with tears in their eyes, distraught, burned out, fed up with losing, etc) and find out how they feel, and was barely in country long enough to need a shower and a change of clothes, we can only call this for what it is.

A disgraceful PR stunt, using the troops as a platform for his ego and campaign.

In comparison, I've seen four star generals and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on this base. They each held an all ranks call, met with and briefed the personnel, and took questions on every subject from tour length to uniform design to rules of engagement to weapon choice to long term policy, from the newest airmen to the senior NCO with TEN 120-180 day tours since Sep 11. It's very clear they want to know what the troops think, and to keep them informed of events. It's equally clear mister Obama does not.

From here we must move to my op part of the oped.

Obama clearly doesn't care about the troops, doesn't care about America, doesn't care about anything except hearing his own voice and the chance to sit at 1600 Pennsylvania AvenueÂ…From where he'll bring us the proven Democratic wartime leadership of Bosnia and the Balkans (US forces still there), Somalia (US forces prevailed despite being ill equipped by executive order, and taking heavy casualties), Haiti (what were we doing there again?), Desert One (oops?), Vietnam (where we snatched defeat from the jaws of victory), Korea (still there), WWI, and the fluke success of WWII won by such wonderful liberal notions as concentration camps for Japanese Americans, nukes, FBI investigations of waitresses who dated soldiers in case they were "morally corrupt" and the (valid) occupation of and continued presence in Italy, Japan and Germany for 60 years, which they are conveniently pretending won't happen with Iraq.

That's not "change." That's "failure we can do without."

Update: Second-day coverage continues here.

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On The Surge: McCain Was Sorta Right, Obama Was Dead Never Wrong

It is rather amusing watching the media and lefty bloggers chase after John McCain for the candidate's continued insistence that the surge set the stage for the Sahawah or Awakening movement. McCain may be using questionable terminology when claiming that the surge predated the awakening, but only if we're talking about the increase in troop strength, which alone would have accomplished nothing.

What made the surge successful—and what McCain can quite fairly argue—is that the counterinsurgency doctrine that began prior to the formation of the Sahawah movement and capitalized on the growing Sunni discontent with al Qaeda is part of or are at least a precursor to the official surge of additional U.S. troops into Iraq.

Critics in the media and blogosphere somehow seem to be under the delusion that merely an increase in troop strength was the reason for the surge succeeding, but it was changes in strategy and tactics used by the greater number of soldiers that made the difference. Of course, how are liberals supposed to get their facts straight when even their experts can't?

McCain was right to go after Barack Obama's confused history of the surge the Sahawah movement, the decline of Shia militias, and the influence political and military movement by U.S. forces had in making each possible.

American forces provided support, funding, material, and often carried out raids on behalf of the Sunni tribes battling al Qaeda. Perhaps the Sunni tribes could have eradicated al Qaeda in time on their own—they had the home field advantage—, but it is a incontrovertible historical fact that they did not achieve their success without substantial U.S. assistance. Did the Sunni Awakening movement officially begin before the official start of the surge? Yes. Did it begin without any U.S. involvement? No. Could it have succeeded? We'll never know. It should worry the American people that Barack Obama does not seem to understand any of this.

Likewise, the more recent decline of Shia militias occurred because U.S. force trained and equipped the Iraqi the IA forces that stormed Barsa and Sadr City, we provided air and ground support during those raids, and of course, were securing other areas which freed up Iraqi forces to take the lead in these assaults which seem to have largely broken the Madhi Army and related Shia gangs. The success of Iraqi security forces over Shia militias did not happen in a vacuum, but because of substantial U.S. involvement. Barack Obama does not seem to understand this.

The security gains made in Iraq simply would not have occurred as quickly or as successfully as they did without U.S. forces. That Barack Obama would try to minimize that is understandable, as it to admit American forces were vital to the current state of affairs in Iraq would be an admission that he was wrong about the surge, and as we all know, Barack Obama is never wrong.

And so Barack Obama wasn't wrong about standing against the surge. He was not wrong for advocating the abandonment of the Iraqi people when things got tough. Barack Obama is never wrong.

And just pray the freshman senator isn't elected to a position where he'll "never be wrong" about issues affecting your life.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:30 AM | Comments (32) | Add Comment
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July 23, 2008

A Russian "Greenlight" to Attack Iran?

That is one intriguing interpretation of today's disclosure that Iran would be getting the long range Russian surface-to-air missile system known as the S-300PMU-1 (SA-20), and that the system would be deployable in as soon as six months from their expected September arrival.

The Russians no doubt relish the contortions the West is going through over Iran's nuclear program, but at the same time, their intelligence organizations are telling them that Iran is working on developing nuclear weapons and missile technologies that can also threaten Russian interests.

By selling the Iranians advanced weapons systems and then disclosing their most likely deployment dates, the Russians are trying to have their cake and eat it too.

They've outlined the outside window of Iran's greatest vulnerability to an air assault on its nuclear program and command and control facilities. It only remains to be seen now whether or not American and Israeli leaders will strike with enough force to irreparably destroy key elements of the Iranian nuclear program, or if they will make the deadly mistake of trying to avert a nuclear war "on the cheap."

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 12:58 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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The Sunshine Patriot

Grim at Blackfive tears Obama a new one:


They say "victory has a thousand fathers," but to Sen. Obama, the Surge is a bastard.

Grim is responding, at least in part, to Joe Klein's meltdown, in which the panicking journalist attacked John McCain for pointing out that McCain is willing to lose the election in order to win the Iraq War, while Obama has been committed to losing the Iraq War as a plank of his political platform since 2006.

Obama's shift was a calculated appeal to the far left progressive base, a move which eventually helped him lock-up the Democratic nomination. He has stuck to that commitment. Even now, as Obama made clear to Couric, he would not have supported the surge.

His record of statements related to the war on Iraq is extensive and well-documented. He was opposed to the war from the start as noted in his over-hyped 2002 speech, adopted the position in 2004 that a withdrawal without victory " would be a betrayal of the promise that we made to the Iraqi people, and it would be hugely destabilizing from a national security perspective" and a dishonoring of the sacrifice of American soldiers.

By 2005-2006, Obama had made his final evolution, changing positions again and committing to unconditional withdrawal for his presidential run; victory was no longer on his agenda.


On October 22, 2006, Obama proclaimed the urgent necessity for "all the leadership in Washington to execute a serious change of course in Iraq." That change was decidedly not in the direction of stepping up our war effort by sending additional troops—a shift advocated by some conservative critics of administration policy and at that point being seriously considered by the White House and the Pentagon. Quite the contrary: the change Obama had in mind was to initiate, as quickly as possible, a "phased withdrawal" from Iraq. There was to be no more talk from him about leaving a "stabilized" situation. Nor, for Obama, was the issue debatable. His latest predictive judgment was that "We cannot, through putting in more troops or maintaining the presence that we have, expect that somehow the situation is going to improve."

It is clear that since 2006, Obama had far less interest in winning the Iraq war than he did withdrawing American troops. Getting out was Barack Obama's primary concern. Winning was not. John McCain's charge that "I would rather lose a political campaign than lose a war. It seems to me that Obama would rather lose a war in order to win a political campaign" is deadly accurate.

Joe Klein can shriek all he wants that McCain's line of attack is "scurrilous" and "smacks of desperation," but the simple fact remains that Obama's record, scant as it is, betrays his character. It shows him to be what Thomas Paine described during our own nation's founding war as a sunshine patriot:


THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated.

When times in Iraq became toughest, Barack Obama wilted. When tyranny threatened, he committed to conceding the field. Being a politician, and a liberal at that, he proudly made his desire to run away from conflict and abandon the Iraqi people to whatever fate befell them part of the central core of his campaign.

"Vote for me. I shirk from difficulty. " he seemed to be saying. "Vote for me. I will not require sacrifice. Vote for me. I promise safety. Vote for me. I will bend to your will."

And such is the core of his appeal.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 10:44 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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The Iraq We'd Have If We'd Heeded Obama

Why, I agree with every word.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 06:43 AM | Comments (11) | Add Comment
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July 22, 2008

Obama: Surge Was An Unnecessary Success

Katie Couric—well known for creampuff interviews—nonetheless presses a befuddled Barack Obama into admitting that even with today's perfect 20/20 hindsight, he'd still reject the surge.


Couric: But talking microcosmically, did the surge, the addition of 30,000 additional troops ... help the situation in Iraq?

Obama: Katie, as Â… you've asked me three different times, and I have said repeatedly that there is no doubt that our troops helped to reduce violence. There's no doubt.

Couric: But yet you're saying Â… given what you know now, you still wouldn't support it Â… so I'm just trying to understand this.

Obama: Because Â… it's pretty straightforward. By us putting $10 billion to $12 billion a month, $200 billion, that's money that could have gone into Afghanistan. Those additional troops could have gone into Afghanistan. That money also could have been used to shore up a declining economic situation in the United States. That money could have been applied to having a serious energy security plan so that we were reducing our demand on oil, which is helping to fund the insurgents in many countries. So those are all factors that would be taken into consideration in my decision-- to deal with a specific tactic or strategy inside of Iraq.

Couric: And I really don't mean to belabor this, Senator, because I'm really, I'm trying Â… to figure out your position. Do you think the level of security in Iraq Â…

Obama: Yes.

Couric Â… would exist today without the surge?

Obama: Katie, I have no idea what would have happened had we applied my approach, which was to put more pressure on the Iraqis to arrive at a political reconciliation. So this is all hypotheticals. What I can say is that there's no doubt that our U.S. troops have contributed to a reduction of violence in Iraq. I said that, not just today, not just yesterday, but I've said that previously. What that doesn't change is that we've got to have a different strategic approach if we're going to make America as safe as possible.

What character... admitting to 25 million Iraqis that their lives are nothing more than marks to be counted against in a ledger, chits with a firm price. Gives you pause when considering what he'll do if allowed into office to socialize your healthcare, doesn't it?

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 11:27 PM | Comments (33) | Add Comment
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Mac & P.C.


"I'm unbearably P.C." "Hi. I'm P.C."







"McCain "And I'm—wait a second, don't I get to go first?"



"I'm unbearably P.C." "Not as long as there is a New York Times."


more...

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:23 AM | Comments (42) | Add Comment
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July 21, 2008

Why Are Snub-Nosed Revolvers Suggested for New Shooters?

One of the co-bloggers at Ace-of-Spades has asked for advice on a handgun for CCH carry, and as a quick click over there will attest, there is no shortage of advice. Some of the advice provided so far is solid, most of it fell into the moderately helpful category, and some of it is simply ignorant or irrelevant to the question asked.

What was fascinating about the suggestions made was the overwhelming "conventional wisdom" recommendation of a short-barreled .38 Special/.357 Magnum revolver offered by many of those who responded.

A snub-nosed .38 revolver can be an excellent concealed carry gun—I currently have one in my possession that I've carried recently— but I don't know that I agree with some of the reasoning offered by those suggesting such a revolver for a new shooter with "little girly hands."

The basic snub-nosed revolver has great reliability, is uncomplicated, and in the ever-popular .38 Special, has decent stopping power when paired with modern defensive ammunition. That said the downsides are that it is thick through the cylinder (which can make it harder to conceal), and the short sight radius and heavy double-action trigger pull on most of those coming from the factory can make it difficult to shoot well, particularly for people with "little girly hands."

[FYI, my standard for "shooting well" is roughly defined as being able to put 5 shots in 9-inch paper-plate at 5 yards in less than 4 seconds from low-ready or a retention position, which isn't a very high standard, but is defensively adequate. Many people can do that in half the time.]

In contrast, good DAO semi-automatic subcompact pistols abound, and they can be far easier to learn to shoot to our "shoot well" standard, and often in a shorter amount of training time.

Whether you want to plug the merits of a Kahr, Springfield Armory XD, Glock, Smith & Wesson M&P, Kel-tec or something else is irrelevant to me, but the design philosophy behind these pistols seem to have resulted in numerous advantages over similarly-sized snub-nosed revolvers.

Most of these pistols are thinner than revolvers (at their thickest points), have a longer sight radius, a more manageable (typically longer and lighter) trigger pull, and a greater choice of ammunition (I'm thinking 9mm and .40 S&W in particular)that is less expensive and has a better reputation for stopping fights than the .38, without kicking as hard or with the blinding flash of a .357 Magnum. Semi-autos also offer a distinct advantage in reloading times and capacity, but as most shootings average 3-4 shots, this shouldn't be a deciding factor.

So tell me: why are snub-nosed revolvers so repeated recommended for new shooters, even by people who prefer semi-autos for their own use?

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 12:54 PM | Comments (17) | Add Comment
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Lost in Translation

I was out of town and missed the Maliki withdrawal kerfluffle over the weekend, but it looks like it was likely much ado about nothing anyway, and perhaps nothing more than a translation error, even according to the Obama-backing Times.

Frankly, I'm just glad we're at a point where Iraq is beginning to stabilize enough that we can realistically begin to discuss drawing down American assets in Iraq in victory—quite a bit different circumstance than the long-held Democratic Party position, which was (and still is) for a reckless withdrawal with all possible speed, regardless of what that withdrawal with mean to Iraqi civilians or to the region.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:30 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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Obama Overflies Mass Iraqi Graves

Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama overflew the Iraqi cities of Baghdad and Najaf today, where the mass graves for an estimated 240,000 victims of sectarian violence killed since 2007 were visible even from altitude.

Senator Obama was on his way to meet with American soldiers completing the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq in Kuwaiti ports, while miles away Iranian and Saudi delegations were meeting in an emergency summit in Kuwait City in an effort to keep the Iraqi Civil War from boiling over into open regional conflict. Both sides have accused the other of providing advanced weaponry and training, while faulting American leaders for the bloody collapse of the Iraqi state.

Except, of course, none of that really happened.

Barack Obama is in Baghdad today for one reason and one reason only: the current President wisely ignored the first-term Senator's repeated calls to abandon the Iraqi people, and instead listened to advice to change commanders, strategy, and tactics in Iraq. The resulting COIN doctrine implemented by American forces under General David Petraeus and a surge of American forces into Iraq coincided with a popular Sunni revolt against the al Qaeda-led insurgency known as the Awakening movement, which was followed by the fracturing of the Shia Madhi Army and other militant groups.

If we had listened to Barack Obama in 2002, Saddam Hussein (or his murderous son Qusay) would still be brutally repressing hundreds of thousands of Iraqi Shiites and Kurds, and some of the world's most accomplished terrorists (such as Abu Abbas, 1993 WTC bomber Abdul Rahman Yasin, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi) would still be calling Iraq home. I doubt Obama would be flying to Baghdad.

If we had listened to him in 2005-2006 when things were at their worst, then the nightmare scenario of an open Iraqi civil war fought with the backing of Saudi Arabia and Iran and verging on a wider regional war would possibly be playing out. I doubt Obama would be flying to Baghdad.

So by all means, let the journalists of the New York Times paint his visit as an accomplishment of some sort.

Just keep in mind that if we had followed the starter Senator's judgment at any point during his political career, Iraq could have been too dangerous a place for his flight to even consider touching down.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 08:57 AM | Comments (19) | Add Comment
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July 18, 2008

Still No Good Explanation for Obama's Plan For A State Security Apparatus

Our good friends on the far left have plenty of snark to drop in this post, suddenly finding an aversion to Third Reich analogies after seven years of BushHilter and comparisons of the RNC to Nazis.

What they have not done, nor even seriously attempted, was to explain the comments the media so carefully edited-out of a speech that Obama recently gave, where he advocated a "civilian national security force" that is "just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded" as the nation's military.

As I noted in my last comment to that post, "national" means United States, or domestic in nature, not a international force. Security means "police."

Unless Obama was uttering "just words," he was advocating domestic state security. That he would make plain his intentions to make his SS "just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded" as the strongest military in the history of Planet Earth should be a cause for concern for everyone, and not just because he's talking of creating another massive bureaucracy and colossal tax burden.

Why does a free nation that already has the FBI, ATF, and DHS on the federal level, SBIs, state police, and highway patrols on the state level, in conjunction with local sheriffs and police agencies, with the backing the Army and Air Force National Guard and Coast Guard units for the most extreme emergencies, need an additional national domestic security apparatus dwarfing all current federal law enforcement agencies, equal in power and scope to the military?

How does the Democratic frontrunner make a call for such an alarming organization, and the media not report it. Worse, how do they get a way with erasing those words from transcripts of the speech?

I'm getting a lot of snark from those on the political left for stating that I didn't like Obama's plan any better in the original German, but precious few explanations of why a free nation would need such an imposing force, one only useful against it's own citizenry.

Update: closing comments due to surge in comment spam.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 12:41 PM | Comments (59) | Add Comment
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